In recent years, both psilocybin-assisted therapy and mindfulness-based practices have gained recognition for their powerful effects on mental health. Macrodose psilocybin interventions (20–30mg) have shown promise in alleviating symptoms of depression, anxiety, and even PTSD. Meanwhile, mindfulness meditation is a well-established treatment for similar conditions. But what happens when we combine the two?

We are all, each of us, continually trying to reach high ground on a shifting landscape while encased in fog.

The high ground is what you're seeking—love, financial security, meaning and purpose, community to belong to. The shifting landscape is everything inside and outside of you that changes as you move toward that high ground. The fog is your inability to see everything between here and there.

This is the nature of life.

When you come to me for life coaching—whether you're navigating a career change, a relationship decision, recovery from loss, or trying to build a life more aligned with who you are—we're always working with this fundamental condition.

Two landmark psilocybin studies at Johns Hopkins and NYU focused on people confronting mortality in the most intimate and immediate way—fighting their way through a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. The results of these studies were remarkable: a single high-dose psilocybin session, combined with therapeutic support, produced substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety. Six months later, approximately 80% of participants continued to show clinically significant improvement.

But here's what I've been thinking: there's another population—a much larger and rapidly growing one—that went through the fire of cancer and came out the other side. They survived. They're supposed to be celebrating. However, they are now in a different kind of fight. A fight to bring meaning to the experience. A fight to understand who they've become. A fight to quell the fear that the cancer might return. A fight that gets far less attention than their previous battle, but is no less devastating.  

They need help.

Here's something I've observed across more than seventy psilocybin sessions: people don't always encounter what they expect, and what actually emerges is often more profound than they could have imagined.

Someone comes in hoping to work on retirement anxiety. They encounter their own mortality so directly that questions about post-career identity dissolve into something much more fundamental. Someone wants to process relationship grief. They confront the ultimate isolation between self and other in ways that go far beyond the specific loss they came to address. Someone arrives uncertain about career choices. They meet the groundlessness beneath all decision-making, discovering that the absence of clear direction isn't a problem to solve but a condition of human freedom. Someone feels lost after children leave home. They touch the depths of meaninglessness, the recognition that purpose isn't given but must be constructed from the inside.

I've released a set of tools I've been building for my own practice—and I'm making them freely available to anyone doing life coaching, therapy, or psilocybin facilitation.

You can access them here: toolkit.mindstreamwellness.net

No login. No account creation. No data collection. Everything stays local in the client's browser.

A client sits across from you—or on your screen, if you're working virtually—and brings up something new. They've been reading about psilocybin therapy. They've heard about the research. They're curious whether it might help them.

If you're like many therapists I've spoken with, this moment prompts a mix of reactions. Interest, perhaps. Uncertainty about what to say. Questions about what your role should be if they decide to pursue it. Maybe some concern about whether this is a distraction from the work you're doing together, or whether it could actually complement it.

The Liberation Intensive is a five-week program designed to deepen the transformation psilocybin makes possible—and help it last. It combines daily meditation practice, two psilocybin sessions, cohort support, and education grounded in neuroscience and psychology—all in one integrated container.

If you're ready for serious commitment to inner work and real transformation, this program is built for you.

Here's a question I hear often: "I'm not sure if I need a therapist for this, or if working with you is enough."

It's a good question. The answer depends on what you're bringing to the work and what you're hoping to get from it. Understanding the different roles—facilitator, coach, therapist—can help you figure out what configuration of support actually fits your situation.

Meditation and psilocybin share deep mechanisms. Both quiet the same brain networks. Both produce strikingly similar subjective experiences. And when researchers combine them, something emerges that neither approach produces as reliably on its own.

I work as a psilocybin facilitator in Oregon, and I also maintain a longtime Zen practice with deepening interest in the Thai Forest tradition. I've seen the intersection from both sides—as a meditator who has worked with psychedelics, and as a facilitator who works with clients ranging from experienced contemplatives to people who have never sat in silence for five minutes. What I've observed aligns with what researchers are finding: these paths inform each other in ways worth understanding.

Most psilocybin facilitation protocols describe what happens: preparation sessions, the journey itself, integration afterward. Fewer explain why these elements matter—what each phase is actually doing, and how they work together to support lasting change.

This post is my attempt to articulate the thinking behind how I work. It's not a complete description of the protocol, which unfolds across multiple sessions and is tailored to each client. It's the conceptual scaffolding—the ideas that inform my choices as a facilitator.

There's a moment that happens reliably in psilocybin sessions—and in meditation retreats, and sometimes in therapy—when someone realizes something they've always "known" but never quite seen:

I am not my thoughts.

It sounds almost trivially obvious when stated directly. Of course you're not your thoughts. You're the one having them. But there's a difference between understanding this conceptually and experiencing it viscerally—watching a thought arise, recognizing it as a thought, and choosing not to follow it down its familiar corridor.

This single insight sits at the heart of both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Buddhist contemplative practice. It's not a coincidence. And understanding why this modern psychological framework and this ancient tradition converge on this point—despite originating 2,500 years and half a world apart—offers something genuinely useful for anyone doing inner work, with or without psilocybin.